Can a power outage result in damaged electronics?

[Muse]

I had my microwave on today and the thing suddenly stopped. Of course, my first thought was a tripped circuit breaker, but I've had that thing running when my toaster was on the same circuit and running and never had the breaker trip, so I was dubious.

Soon, I realized that other things weren't working. I opened my refrigerator and the inside light was very dim. I measured the AC voltage with my cheap-ass Harbor Freight multimeter and it read 58 volts.

I rang my neighbor's door bell and they said they had an outage too, the whole block had issues.

I called PG&E and reported it and a few minutes later the electricity totally went off, then a few minutes later things flipped on again, apparently the problem had been fixed. In my kitchen, however, I have an overhead light/fan combo, and the fan doesn't work anymore. It was not on when the outage happened. The light still works (I have a fluorescent circular fixture in it). There's a pull chain for both the light and the fan. Pulling the chain for the fan now (which has 4 settings, Off, Low, Medium, High), gives no response. Again, the fan's switch was set to off when the outage occurred. Yes, it's possible that the fan was already on the fritz, but I doubt it. Is it possible that the outage killed the fan somehow? A surge??

 

[DesiPower]

Was the Fan on when the sh1t went down? Even if it was on, I seriously doubt any kind of power fluctuation can effect something as basic as a fan, unless there is an inbuilt adapter and it runs on a lower voltage.

 

[Muse]

Was the Fan on when the sh1t went down?

No, the fan's switch (pull chain controlled) was set to off. I leave the ceiling fan/light's wall switch on at all times. I control the light and fan by pulling their respective pull chains. The light was, I suppose, on. The fan was definitely off.

 

[Scarpozzi]

It depends on the device and the power supply. Brown outs are worse than black outs for doing damage, but occasionally when the power source returns, you can get a surge too.

Your best bet is to unplug the devices that aren't acting right for a few minutes and try plugging them back in.

 

[Muse]

It depends on the device and the power supply. Brown outs are worse than black outs for doing damage, but occasionally when the power source returns, you can get a surge too.

Your best bet is to unplug the devices that aren't acting right for a few minutes and try plugging them back in.

Hmm, seems strange that the fan wouldn't work. Maybe the switch burned out, don't know how the fan could burn out if the switch was off, but who knows, maybe a power surge caused the switch to pass current to the fan coils. Possible the fan was bad and I didn't know it. I rarely use the fan, I hadn't in quite a few months, I'm certain.

 

[Ichinisan]

Power outages, even very brief ones, often coincide with power surges. I've had lots of damaged electronics from power flickering in my apartment.

 

[DaTT]

Was the Fan on when the sh1t went down? Even if it was on, I seriously doubt any kind of power fluctuation can effect something as basic as a fan, unless there is an inbuilt adapter and it runs on a lower voltage.

Did you even read the OP?

 

[Markbnj]

What you experience as an outage is a series of events that affect some portion of the grid, and some of those events can cause surges that will absolutely damage equipment. That said, I'm surprised that a fan got hit. Open it up and find the control board and look for damage. Sometimes it's pretty visible (look for popped caps).

 

[LTC8K6]

Yeah, the fan speed control is probably electronic.

 

[who?]

I wonder if the neutral side got zapped. If your single phases are one side of a 208 volt spread maybe they didn't get both sides fixed.

 

[Muse]

I wonder if the neutral side got zapped. If your single phases are one side of a 208 volt spread maybe they didn't get both sides fixed.

Um, could you please demystify this post?